


Apocalypse

by juggieheadcoopers



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, F/M, Tumblr Ask Box Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 22:54:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10774182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juggieheadcoopers/pseuds/juggieheadcoopers
Summary: AU where Betty and Jughead fight to survive a zombie apocalypse together





	Apocalypse

**Author's Note:**

> Because this is an AU, I decided to have it where Betty and Jughead don’t know each other, but they have to work together to survive the apocalypse - same with the rest of the gang. Right now this is a one shot, but if you want me to continue it just let me know. It was actually really fun to write!

“Hello?”

Betty Cooper took a cautious step around the corner of the abandoned soap factory she had taken shelter in, clutching her weapon to her chest as if it were her most prized possession.

“Is somebody there?” She tiptoed down the hallway, kicking away the garbage and dozens of flyers warning the town about the danger that they were currently experiencing as she headed towards the noise that had drawn her attention. 

“You should know I have an axe and I’m not afraid to use it!” Betty whisper-yelled down the hallway, her voice echoing off the bare walls and traveling down the dark corridor. 

Before Betty could react, a dark figure came barreling around the corner, taking her by the shoulders and placing a gloved hand over her mouth, hindering her ability to scream. The man spun her around so that she was facing his slender, yet surprisingly muscular figure, being sure to keep his hand firmly pressed against her mouth as he met her terrified expression with a look of disdain.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he spat, his voice surprisingly harsh for the low volume that he was using to speak to her. “Do you want to get attacked today? Because you’re about one syllable away from sending a whole heard of zombies in here to reenact the entirety of the Night of the Living Dead.”

Betty wriggled free of his grasp, backing away from him and wiping her mouth like it had just been touched by the foulest piece of garbage to ever exist. 

“I’m sorry, who are you, and what right do you have to yell at me right now,” Betty shot back, her voice thick with anger as she crossed her arms over her chest and glared menacingly in his direction. 

“I’m the person trying to keep you alive,” he pointed out, pulling out a knife from his tan trench coat and holding it out in front of him as he tentatively peeked around the corner. 

“I was doing just fine on my own, thank you very much,” Betty informed him, adjusting her sweater and charging forward to continue down the hallway without his assistance. 

“Oh yeah, I can see that you’re doing great by yourself,” he muttered, grabbing a fistful of fabric from the back of her sweater and pulling her backwards to stand beside him. He gestured to the weapon Betty was still clutching and glanced back up to narrow his eyes at her. “An axe was it?” 

Betty hid the hammer behind her back and raised her nose up at him as if to say, “I’m proud of my hammer and I don’t care what you say about it.”

“It’s all I could find,” Betty defended her weapon of choice, her neck craning around his body to see if anyone - or anything - was headed in their direction. “It’s not like I planned on there being a zombie apocalypse when I got out of bed this morning.” 

“Yeah, well these things aren’t usually planned,” he muttered under his breath, his expression softening ever-so-slightly as he turned his head to glance over at Betty. “The name’s Jughead by the way.”

Jughead held out his knife-free hand for her to shake, and after only a moment of hesitation, Betty took it, smiling up at him as they both felt the walls that they had built up over the past 24 hours that prevented them from trusting anyone, beginning to tumble to the ground.

“Betty,” she introduced herself, dropping her hand from his grip as a scuffling of what sounded like feet struggling to find their footing somewhere in the distance, caused her heart to skip a beat. “Did you hear something?”

“No,” Jughead shook his head, but then stopped suddenly, grabbing Betty’s arm and holding them both as still as possible. “Wait.”

A clattering of something falling onto the cement floor echoed across the factory, causing Jughead to pull Betty back against the wall and gesturing for her not say a word.

“Now that - that I definitely heard,” Jughead whispered, his voice barely audible over the sound of their thudding heartbeats.

As the sound of footsteps came closer and closer, Jughead nodded for Betty to position her weapon at the ready and motioned for her to move on his count. As soon as Jughead put up the number three with his fingers, they both jumped around the corner, completely cutting off the person - or zombie - running towards them. 

“Ahhhhh!” 

Spinning the person around by the shoulders, Jughead took a step forward to pin them to the wall, glancing up to find a panic-stricken girl with shoulder-length dark hair and too-red lipstick breathing heavily as she took in the two strangers standing before her.

“Holy nightmare-on-Pop’s-street,” she breathed, pushing Jughead off her and straightening her crop top once she realized that she wasn’t in any immediate danger. “Why the hell would you jump out of nowhere like that in the middle of a freaking zombie apocalypse?” 

“Veronica?” Betty stepped out from behind Jughead to furrow her brows in confusion at the sight of one of her classmates, whom, just a few hours ago, she thought she would never see again. 

“Oh, hey Betty,” Veronica smiled up at her, happy to see a familiar face. While Betty and Veronica weren’t by any means friends, seeing someone she had known since childhood brought her the comfort she had been lacking over the past day. “Glad to you see you’re still - you know - not undead and all.”

“You too,” Betty returned her smile, lowering the hammer so that it hung to her side, but continuing to hold tightly to the grip with all her might. 

“What’s with John Bender over there?” Veronica nodded to Jughead, who was squatting by the wall, fiddling with some sort of device that Betty had never seen before. Betty turned to follow Veronica’s gaze, and once she thought about it, with his trench coat and fingerless gloves in all, he did in fact look exactly like one of the members of the Breakfast Club. “Hiding from Vice Principal Vernon?” 

“If you were as concerned for our well-being as I am, you’d be keeping a lookout for the brain-eating, flesh consuming, zombies that have flocked to our sleepy little town over the last 24 hours with me,” Jughead snapped, adjusting the gray beanie on his head and taking a deep breath. “But instead you two are having a tea party over there and laughing it up while our friends and family are literally in danger of dying.” 

“Don’t get your trench coat in a twist loner-boy, the street’s clear on the west side,” Veronica informed them. “I just came from inside Pop’s - there’s a ton of survivors there. Lots of food and medical supplies. It’s been deemed the safe haven of the zombie apocalypse.” 

“Then why did you leave?” Jughead asked, narrowing his eyes at her suspiciously as she pulled out the compact mirror from her back pocket and flipping it open to check her appearance. 

“I was bored,” Veronica shrugged, shutting the mirror and sliding it back into her jeans. “Now are we going to fight these freaks or are we just gonna stand here chitchatting all day?”

“You don’t even have a weapon,” Jughead pointed out, gesturing to her empty hands with a skeptical raise of his eyebrow. 

With a smug grin, Veronica whipped out a tube of lipstick, pulling off the cap to reveal a sharp blade in place of the makeup. “Never underestimate a Lodge,” Veronica reminded them, taking a step ahead of Jughead to lead the charge. “Now let’s go kick some walking dead ass so I can make it to prom on Saturday and get voted prom queen instead of that wench Cheryl Blossom.”

“You heard her,” Jughead shrugged, nodding for Betty to follow behind her. “Let’s go.” 

Veronica led them out through the back of the building, tiptoeing through the dark alley as they cautiously kept a lookout for any sign of danger. The streets were abandoned, making the entire atmosphere feel eerie and much-too-quiet for a Friday night in the square. 

“Jughead,” Betty said in a small voice, turning to him as she fell into step beside him. “Can I ask you something?”

“Depends,” Jughead shrugged, glancing down to raise a curious eyebrow at her. “Is it something I want to answer?” 

“Why haven’t I seen you around school?” Betty wondered as they passed the ransacked stores and buildings she had known her entire life. “You’re our age, right? So shouldn’t you be in our grade?”

“Let’s just say that we don’t exactly hang out with the same crowd,” Jughead informed her, turning his head away from her to focus on the dark sidewalk in front of them. “You’re very much in the foreground - seen by everyone, heard by everyone, loved by everyone. I’m very much in the background - makes no noise, seen only by the people who were looking close enough, virtually nonexistent.” 

“Even if that were true, I feel like I still would have noticed you,” Betty told him, slowing her pace and lightly touching his arm so that he would turn to meet her gaze. 

“Trust me,” Jughead muttered. “You wouldn’t have.” 

“You can’t know that,” Betty told him. “Sometimes I wish I had more friends like you. You’re different than most people, Jughead.” 

“So I’ve been told,” Jughead mumbled, glancing away from her gaze and continuing down the road to catch up to Veronica. 

“I didn’t mean that as a bad thing,” Betty stopped completely, taking Jughead by the elbow and turning his body to face hers. “You don’t follow anyone’s rules but your own. You know what you want and you aren’t afraid to go for it. Not only that, but you don’t apologize for being exactly who you are. I like that. I admire that.”

Betty held his gaze for a second longer than necessary, a world of unspoken possibilities passing between them without either one of them having to say another word.

“Would you two stop flirting so we can save the town from the our very own Riverdale version of the Walking Dead?” Veronica turned to see how far behind they had fallen, gesturing for them to keep up with her as she made her way to the end of the street. 

“I don’t even see any sign of them any more,” Betty noticed, surveying the dimly-lit intersection as she and Jughead jogged to meet up with Veronica. “Maybe they decided to just, I don’t know, crawl back into the ground?” 

“Then how do you explain that?” Veronica froze, pointing down the road as a dozen zombies hobbled their way towards them, grunting and moaning every step of the way. 

“Shit!” Jughead cursed, grabbing Betty by the arm and pushing her towards the side of the street where Pop’s Chock’Lit Shoppe was located. “Go, go, go!” 

“I thought we were going to fight, not run!” Betty pointed out, hopping onto the curb and glancing back at the impending herd of zombies making their way over to them. 

“Do you really want to fight that right now?” Veronica asked, her breath coming in panicked spurts as she followed her new friends to the front door of the diner. 

Jughead pounded on the door as loud as he could, hoping that someone would take a leap of faith and let them in.

“Help!” Betty screamed, knocking loudly on the darkened windows. “Let us in!”

The blinds opened slightly to reveal another one of Betty’s classmates, Cheryl Blossom, her red lips shining bright against the darkly-lit background of the dining area. 

“Are you insane?” Cheryl spat. “You led them right to the safe haven full of living, breathing humans? Are you seriously on the same stupidity level as those teenage girls who always get their head sliced off within the first ten minutes of a slasher movie?” 

“You can yell at us later,” Veronica told her, rolling her eyes at her nemesis in the high school social hierarchy and jiggling the doorknob. “Just please let us inside.”

“Let them in, Kevin,” a voice that Betty recognized as the football captain, Archie Andrews, instructed from somewhere inside the diner, and the boy standing guard by the front entrance unlocked the door just as he was told. “I know them.” 

“Fine, but we are so going to have a serious talk about proper apocalypse etiquette for next time,” Kevin informed them, opening the door slightly and stepping to the side to let them inside. 

“Fine, just open the door!” Veronica pushed past Kevin to join the group of survivors, with Jughead following closely behind her.

“Honestly, have you never seen any of the classic zombie films like-” Kevin started to complain, but was promptly cut-off by a squeal coming from the sidewalk just outside of Pop’s. 

“Uh, guys,” Betty muttered, her eyes wide with panic as a zombie pinned her to the ground, desperately chomping at the bit to dig into her flesh. 

“Betty!” Jughead breathed, pushing past Kevin and Veronica to make his way back onto the street, his weapon already drawn in order to push the zombie away from Betty. 

“Hey, get off of her!” Jughead maneuvered around Betty to kick the moaning creature in the throat, causing it to stumble backwards, having completely lost its balance. 

“It’s too late, she’s a goner,” Kevin informed him, already beginning to shut the door behind him. “There’s no saving her now!”

“I’m not just going to let them take her,” Jughead told him, glancing back at Betty with concerned eyes as they watched the zombie regain its footing and slowly make its way back to them. 

“Fine, then you’re on your own,” Cheryl stepped in front of Kevin, pushing him out of the way and slamming the door shut. “Have fun being zombie food!” 

“Wait!” Betty ran to stop the door from closing, but it was too late. They were locked out. 

“They aren’t going to let us back in,” Jughead told her, a solemn tone to his voice as he took note of the dozens of zombies heading right for them. “We really are on our own.” 

“You really think we can take them?” Betty asked, still clutching her hammer like it was the most important tool she had ever held. 

“I guess we’re about to find out,” Jughead muttered, turning to smile helplessly at the girl he had only just met, but who was quickly becoming someone he felt like he would gladly fight for. “You watch my back, I’ll watch yours?” 

Betty should have felt scared. She should have felt like they had no chance of surviving this fight. But standing next to Jughead, with his too-tough exterior and kind eyes, she felt like she could do anything. Even survive a zombie apocalypse with just a measly hammer as a weapon. “Let’s do this.“ 

With a quick tightening of her ponytail and a nod of approval from Jughead, they charged forward to fight the impossible fight, side by side.


End file.
